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It is a funny world where a man with out a tool has the advantage over a man with a tool.

Hi Chris,
it might 'walk' a little bit off topic, but my view is that it is a funny world, where a man without intention has an advantage over a man with fixed intention. That is hard enough for many of us to believe.

And the tool bears the risk to fix ones intention - at least to use or keep the tool, which could have the negative effect.

After long training you might get over it and see the knife only as one eligible tool out of your complete tool set (arms, legs,and mind!). Then this tool is really an additional advantage.

Then you might understand, why many aikidoka, facing two armed opponents, takes the first one, gains his knife and throws it away to take care of the next one

Wise and experienced aikidoka would keep it as long as it is useful, but do not try to stick to it, while it is not useful any longer.

Funny. We also do a drill where "uke" (with knife) can attack in any manner he chooses (below the neck), and "nage" (sans knife) seeks to apply technique, which could be deflecting, grabbing, evading, throwing, whatever he deems appropriate. Uke "wins" 95% of the time. No one's been killed yet though!

Do you feel having a knife put you at a disadvantage?

Just to reiterate, the video that started this thread was not tanto dori per se, but you should make a video of your tanto dori, and post it. I'd like to see what you're doing.

That is funny. I'll see what I can do about getting a video of what we do posted.

Not really because it functions as a wrist grab and no way is tori going to simply let go and allow uke to freely use their tanto hand. The disadvantage is that after the initial attack uke is always one technique behind tori and always in a position of having to try and maintain or regain their balace. Tori on the other hand has their balance and is free to react to whatever uke does. In effect there is no knife after the first attack, until the end when you
So, to go back to the orginal question, if uke can maybe put some atemi in or otherwise disrupt tori's flow he can still use his taken hand to take the inititve and the majority of uke's wins are down to this kind of thing.

Hi Dirk,
I hope that after long training you will come to understand the serious implications a tool (knife gun sword etc.) brings into physical conflict. Maybe soldiers in wars should simply arm themselves with their "arms legs and minds" I think you are a little confused about what a weapon can do to a human body as compared to a fist or foot.

I hesitate to to comment of stuff like this but I wonder how many people here have been properly trained in using a knife and how many have really been in a life threatening knife fight? I am trained in tanto jutsu and train extensively in defending against a knife attack. I have also been the victim of a serious knife assault. I disarmed the attacker by breaking his arm but was severly cut in the process. I'm very lucky to still have complete use of my right hand. It could just as easily have gone the other way with me being killed. That's the simple truth of it.

The knife weilding attacker, if trained in the proper use of a knife always has the advantage....ALWAYS. To believe otherwise is sheer fantasy.

Thanks for posting your story. I'm sorry it happened, but glad you made it. A lot of people need to open their eyes to the damage that even a small knife can do.

One of my favorite quotes fits well in this discussion.

"You are bound to meet misfortune if you are unarmed because, among other reasons, people despise you...There is simply no comparison between a man who is armed and one who is not." -- Niccolo Machiavelli

-Michael
"Through aiki we can feel the mind of the enemy who comes to attack and are thus able to respond immediately." - M. Mochizuki

Alex you do realize that a knife wielder can throw fakes to off balance the opponent right?

Yup. Uke isn't just there to deliver an attack and be thrown, they're there to use every trick they can think off to get a cut or a stab in and faints are most certainly used and even the slightest contact with the tanto is classed as uke winning.
Remember also this isn't something we're meant to be doing, this is something that picked up at a martial arts event when we were told to take a tanto and fight until someone won. We got frowned upon by senior Aikidoka for doing it at the time and even our own instructor doesn't let us do it. So it's something we do once in a blue moon out of the way of prying eyes so that we don't get in trouble for it.
The upside of that is that it's not really bound up with Aikido norms, it's just two people with a tanto messing around.

I hesitate to to comment of stuff like this but I wonder how many people here have been properly trained in using a knife and how many have really been in a life threatening knife fight? I am trained in tanto jutsu and train extensively in defending against a knife attack. I have also been the victim of a serious knife assault. I disarmed the attacker by breaking his arm but was severly cut in the process. I'm very lucky to still have complete use of my right hand. It could just as easily have gone the other way with me being killed. That's the simple truth of it.

The knife weilding attacker, if trained in the proper use of a knife always has the advantage....ALWAYS. To believe otherwise is sheer fantasy.

Hey guys,
I'm the other guy in the video I guess I'm the "big fellow". The idea of the drill is to train both the grabbing and the knife useing side. It is not a fair drill, but it's also not competitive, so it doesn't matter that it's one sided. Also the drill doesn't start till one person has a secure grab, as this lets us focus on the escapes and techniqual aspects of Aikido instead of the parts you normally see trained in standard jiyu waza ..... Please don't look at this as a Knife fight, or a Tanto Dori, or any other such, it's only a randori with a knife.

That's fair enough. I do the same thing, do some irimi tenkan exercises with a wooden knife in each hand. The point is not so much to do knife technique as to reinforce the cncept of the tegatana o "hand sword;" having a balde in each hand not only gets in the idea that you're "cutting" with you hand. Also the idea that both hands should be "live," instead of one hangining like a limp noodle. I now I'm not oing goodknife tecniqu; 'm just using the knives to help with some Aikido basics. A suBtle distinction.

You just went from having an ounce of credibility with me, to about zero. You do this practice you are speaking of "in secret" so you don't "get in trouble"???? Are you 15? You should simmer down and let the grown ups talk for a bit.

You just went from having an ounce of credibility with me, to about zero. You do this practice you are speaking of "in secret" so you don't "get in trouble"???? Are you 15? You should simmer down and let the grown ups talk for a bit.

Please understand, in our organisation just about any deviation from the norm will cost you a grading. Last year I was interested on going to a course run by a certain instructor. Now this instructor has a reputation for being

Please understand, in our organisation just about any deviation from the norm will cost you a grading. Last year I was interested on going to a course run by a certain instructor. Now this instructor has a reputation for being more martial that most and I assume that is why he seems to be less popular with senior instructors. Anyway, I was intending to go on his course but was asked not to go by my instructor because it would cause trouble and jeopardise
my next grading. This is the situation we work in.
If the exercise I'm talking about was a long standing Aikido exercise or had been created by an Aikidoka we'd be ok up to a certain point but it's a Kung Fu exercise that we picked up at a fund raising seminar and even then our instructor was asked "who taught them that" in reference to us by a more senior instructor who was not in the least bit happy at what he saw.
We don't want to risk a years worth of grading prep only to be failed because we're using a Kung Fu knife defence exercise to do full resistance training, so we keep things quiet. Please don't get personal or blow things out of proportion.

The idea of the drill is to train both the grabbing and the knife useing side.

Why train yourself to grab at someone threatening you with a knife? I've mentioned already why this might not be a good idea. Besides, didn't you say the drill starts after you've been grabbed? Did you mean that you train to hold the person with the knife? What other knife drills do you practice?

From what I saw, the "knife using side" of the exchange seemed largely unfamiliar with knife fighting. Do you guys train in how to fight with a knife?

Quote:

Also the drill doesn't start till one person has a secure grab, as this lets us focus on the escapes and techniqual aspects of Aikido instead of the parts you normally see trained in standard jiyu waza.

Yeah, that's what I thought you'd said. You do grab before you start this drill. Anyway, what technical aspects of Aikido were you focusing on in this drill? I didn't see much in the way of relaxation, nor any moving with the attacker's energy and leading it. These things are fundamental to Aikido, so what kind of Aikido are you practicing that neglects these things?

Quote:

I have talked at length on Aikiweb many times of my oppinions of Aikido as a weapons system. I believe the techniques of Aikido are (mostly) designed to deal with a guy who trys to restrain your weapon hand. If you look you can see Mike useing Nikkyo several times to free his knife hand and stab me. We are attempting to train the techniques against resistance, as most Aikidoka will freeze up when the face resistance for the frist time, we are trying to train that out of ourselves.

Interesting...Why do you resort so much to struggling and wrestling with each other? I know from experience that there are other better, more Aikido-like ways to deal with the situation you're training in (I've hinted at those ways a couple of times already).

Quote:

-Christopher Hein
p.s. Jonathan, if you don't worrie about the knife you will be cut much more, if you don't believe me, you should come to our dojo, and we'll go a few minutes and see how you do.

I think I'd do all right,Chris. I'm no expert, but I think if I came to your dojo I'd be able to help you alot with your knife training. Certainly, I could show you a faster, better, and less strenuous way to defend against a knife. Hey, have you practiced against a double-knife attack? If you haven't, give it a try; it's alot of fun!

I suggest not focusing on the knife, but that isn't the same as ignoring it altogether. Generally, when faced with a knife people become preoccupied with the danger it represents. As a consequence, they don't have a mind free to creatively and effectively respond to whatever attack is launched. Really, the knife isn't the threat, is it? It's the person using the knife that you need to deal with. So, I have found that controlling the attacker is more important than trying to control the knife. If I neutralize the attacker, the knife ceases to be a threat. So, rather than focus on the knife and struggle with the hand that holds it, I slip past the knife attack, atemi, and apply a controlling measure to my attacker. Then, I take the knife away. Mind you, this is alot harder than it sounds.

Jon.

Last edited by akiy : 02-05-2007 at 03:46 PM.
Reason: Fixed quoting

"Iron sharpens iron; so a man sharpens the countenance of his friend."

Lets see if I can answer your questions in the order you presented them.

Why would you grab the weapon hand of someone using a weapon.
Well because if you don't control the weapon you will have the weapon used against you. Saving knocking your opponent out, you must control the weapon hand. If you do not control the weapon hand then even if you control the persons body, they will be able to use the weapon on you.

The knifer in the clip is using Aikido techniques to free himself, and attempt to control me. So I don't understand what you mean by unfamiliar with knife fighting. Michael Varin is a black belt in Aikido, an we both believe Aikido is a weapons system. If you mean Kali or any other knife system, then no, Michael is not trained in Kali or any other knife system that I'm aware of.

What aspect of Aikido were we focussing on?
Well What I was referring to, is most Jiyu waza in traditional Aikido focus's on blending before contact. This drill focus's on blending after contact is made, and more specifically what happens when the other guy is actively working against you.

You say you didn't' see much relaxation, or leading of the attackers energy and moving with it. Funny because when I look at the clip I see lots of it. No it doesn't look like you maybe used to seeing Aikido, because most of what people see when they see Aikido is one guy doing technique and the other guy going along with the technique. In this drill both guys are trying to work against each other. Neither is ever going along with what is being done to him. So yes to moments of leading the others energy are short, but this is because we are both at the same level. It's never easy to work with someone who is at the same level as you (when you are trying to work against them). If it were a clip of Michael or I working with a white belt it would look different still.

Why do I resort to so much wrestling and struggling?
Well because it's hard. Michael is a crafty fellow, and it's not easy for me to fool him so I can throw him. Maybe you can throw Michael easier then I can.....

I'm sure that you believe you have a better way to do everything, and you have an open invitation to come train with us sometime. I promise we won't be to rough on you.

As for my focus.
I agree that over focusing on the weapon is dangerous. But I don't believe I do that. I feel pretty open to what's around me. Maybe you should ask Michael how it is to work with me. He's done it many time, he can probably tell you if I'm preoccupied and uncreative.

Quote:

Jonathan Hay wrote:

So, rather than focus on the knife and struggle with the hand that holds it, I slip past the knife attack, atemi, and apply a controlling measure to my attacker. Then, I take the knife away.

That sounds pretty nice, but I have a hard time doing that against a skilled opponent who is trying to stop me from doing that.

I'm not particularly experienced and I haven't seen much tanto-dori, but I found it interesting (OK a bit weird) that each time they engaged, they started with the assumption that the unarmed guy had already got a grip on the armed guy's knife hand. I would have thought (??) that 'first part' that they skipped would be the most important, difficult, and dangerous part?

After reading the explanations it makes much more sense though -- I guess that just wasn't the point of this particular exercise.

So, you grab the hand holding the knife in order to prevent being cut with the knife. Okay. But if you attempt to do this in real life you will get your hand and arm cut. Why, then, would you practice with the weapon hand already grabbed? Like Basia H. said, this seems to be a practice that removes a very important and very difficult part of dealing with someone wielding a knife, namely, getting to the hand that holds the knife unscathed. Perhaps you deal with this in some other drill?

Through a fair bit of practice with knife attacks it has become apparent to me that controlling the knife hand should happen at the same time as one gains control of the attacker. It makes things much more difficult to first wrestle with the knife hand and then attempt to move against the attacker.

We practice against uncooperative ukes in our knife defense training, too, but it is understood in this practice that uke only works against you when you give him something to work against. You wrote, "Neither is ever going along with what is being done to him" and then remark that moments of leading your partners energy are consequently short. I thought the idea in Aikido was to blend, to harmonize, to redirect aggressive energy, not "work against" your partner as you describe.

No, I don't believe I have a better way to do everything. Not hardly. I'm pretty blunt in my posts, here, but that is more a factor of not having much time to post than of thinking I know everything.

I said that you looked overly focused on the knife because for much of the exchange on the clip you have your hips pushed out behind you and your arms held at their full length. This is typical of people who are preoccupied with not getting cut. But the posture this focus prompts one to take -- the hips pushed way back posture -- prevents one from dealing effectively with one's attacker. You appeared to be trying to keep your body as far away from the knife as possible and so long as you do this you are unable to control your partner. Eventually, you stop doing this and move your body closer to your partner's and are then finally able to throw him.

Especially when dealing with knife attacks, I try to be careful not to impose control on my attacker. The slipping past the knife, the atemi, and the controlling of my attacker all happen in harmony with my attacker. It is difficult to do, but it is possible and so much easier, physically speaking, than what you appear to be doing in your vid clip.

But maybe you have drills that deal with the sort of thing I'm talking about?

"Iron sharpens iron; so a man sharpens the countenance of his friend."

This vid has been posted here before. I would like to highlight that this vid is what I am familiar with on how to deal with tanto. Compare and contrast with the approach taken by ChrisH and MichaelV.

Maybe it is just different flavouring? But I still prefer the method in this video. There will never be a right or wrong answer.

Boon.

Filipino Kali has a great many drills where one or both partners havea knife; on particlar sensitivity drill can be done empty-handed or with a knife or with a stick -- it chieves the same thing.

On the other hand, we also practice disarms. While not as spectacuarly loud as the nage in the other clip, te idea of gettig a shot in before the disarm attempt is a valid one.

Both types of traning have merit; ChrisH and MichaelV have described what they're doing as a drill and not, specifically, a knife technique. Of course, you and your partner put on a pair of safety goggles, pick up rubber knives, and go at it, and you don't do anything that looks lik eithr category. And the reality is that when attacked with a knife, you will be cut -- you just want to minimize he damage.

But that doesn't mean that the methodology in ether clip is "wrong," just serving different purposes.

Nice clip Boon,
But that is a cooperative practice, and that is also tanto dori (knife taking). I got what you are saying, what we are doing looks very different then that. The reason is because what we are doing is noncooperative, and because we are not doing tanto dori.

Mr. Hay,
I believe that the techniques of Aikido focus on the guy with the weapon, and not the guy who is unarmed (i.e. Aikido techniques are designed to use when you are armed and no the other way around). I know this is different then what you think of Aikido, but that is the way we practice at our dojo. So if you have a weapon, one of the major problems you may run into is someone controlling your knife hand. As I said before, it is a free practice, but if there was a focus it is on the guy with the knife doing technique (clearly making it the opposite of a tanto dori), it simply has the benefit of teaching the other guy to hold an armed attacker.

Personally Mr. Hay, I don't know you, so I can't speak to your ability, maybe you have far more ability in this aria then I do. However I have trained and fought mixed martial arts, and I have fought with the dog brothers. My experience with a trained attacker trying to resist my efforts, points to this being the right direction for me to pursue. Most of what you are saying, to me, sounds like it comes from someone who has not experienced much resistance, but I've been wrong before.

Nice clip Boon,
But that is a cooperative practice, and that is also tanto dori (knife taking). I got what you are saying, what we are doing looks very different then that. The reason is because what we are doing is noncooperative, and because we are not doing tanto dori.

OK, got it ChrisH. As I say I am unfamiliar with the type of grappling with tanto type of drills you showed on the clip. But then, IMO, I would be very cautious with grappling with an armed opponent. I will leave you be and thanks again for contributing to this thread.

As you can see, grabbing the wrist and trying to to grapple with a knife wielding assailant is not the brightest of idea, IMO. To me, it is very risky, as the chances of getting cuts is just to prohibitive.

I have some thoughts wrt to better ways to deal with such scenario (empty hand wise), but I reserve my judgement till I hear more opinion from other posters.

This vid has been posted here before. I would like to highlight that this vid is what I am familiar with on how to deal with tanto. Compare and contrast with the approach taken by ChrisH and MichaelV.

Maybe it is just different flavouring? But I still prefer the method in this video. There will never be a right or wrong answer.

That the first clip is not a demonstration of tanto dori has already been addressed, but there is still much to compare and contrast. Despite nage's efforts to make this look "real" this is cooperative, and most likely choreographed. If you are unable to see that uke in this clip is allowing himself to be thrown, while Chris and I are constantly counteracting each others attempts to apply technique, you have probably never trained against the kind of resistance we are talking about. Words like "uncooperative" and "resistance" can mean different things to different people. The way we use them is to describe a situation where uke/nage roles do not exist, and we seek to achieve our objective while not allowing the other person(s) to achieve theirs within the parameters of the exercise.

If I were to attack nage from the second clip in an uncooperative fashion, things would look very different. He would be "cut" and "stabbed" numerous times before successfully applying his techniques, AND my lack of ability with a knife has already been exposed on the internet!

Quote:

Jonathan Hay wrote:

From what I saw, the "knife using side" of the exchange seemed largely unfamiliar with knife fighting. Do you guys train in how to fight with a knife?

In all seriousness, if anyone has tanto dori practices that they believe are highly effective, please share. I would love to see video of them.

-Michael
"Through aiki we can feel the mind of the enemy who comes to attack and are thus able to respond immediately." - M. Mochizuki

I read a lot of the old "I will never fail in my technique" aikido in some of the posts in this thread. The assumption that you will avoid the knife, disarm, then pin all while looking pretty is very funny to me. Sure in a perfect world it is going to work that way but things happen, and the video displayed is just a situation drill.

In bjj we do armbar drills, we do armbar escape drills, and we do armbar counter to the escape drills. You might see me start with an armbar and let them start to escape so I can work the counter, then reset over and over. Would you say "Why don't you start by trying to get the armbar, that's the hardest part?", but that would not be the point of the drill. It's obvious to me that the point of the drill shown was to practice working from after you grabbed, but you were not able to immediately disarm, throw, or pin. Seems like a good idea to me. And yes, it did not look perfect. If it did why even bother training it? We are human, we can only peruse perfection.

So cut the guy some slack, this is still an important drill in my mind if you are serious about martially using aikido. I'm sure this is just one of many drills they train if they are seriously pursuing this avenue of training. And regardless of what any one has to say, the movements were real and not contrived. That makes it better then 99% of the aikido video's out there.

Don has a point. Folks need to learn to differentiate between a drill, an exercise, sparring and all out combat. From this thread it seems some are missing this.

Another observation I've made of this thread that I also see when cross training and travelling to different schools is the confusion between what is natural/real and what has become a conditioned "natural" response. In this case it is where the FMA folks and their like, though extremely effective in using a knife as a weapon, tend to approach training to use the knife from a situation of blade on blade, duel type combat. This causes them to believe (and rightly so with a skilled FMA person involved) that certain things simply "will not be done/allowed by a skilled knife fighter", e.g. allowing one to easily get hold of the knife or knife hand. They are of course correct, in an FMA sense and this has probably been the case on the streets of the Philippines and Indonesia where these systems were being developed. These guys will cut most people (skilled or unskilled) to ribbons before they even realise.

However the "average untrained joe" in the West may not use a knife in this manner and may allow a host of things that a trained FMA knife fighter will never do. However the question becomes "what is the probability that I will face a serious attack by a trained knife fighter while going about my daily business?" In some places the answer is a "very high probability" but in cultures where the gun or another weapon may be more regularly used this may not be the case. As such one will find oneself in a situation where an attacker (or his pal more likely) may grab your knife hand to control you long enough for his pal to brain you with a 2x4, iron pipe or baseball bat. Reality does not follow the rules determined by any one or any martial art/fighting method.

From my own experience (attacks on others, not myself) and in my work with Police most knife attacks in the West appear to be the prison-type shanking or quick, repeated, close range stabbing/jabbing type attacks. One hardly if ever sees the swinging slash from anyone who really wants to knife a victim. Also, the knife is most times concelaed until the very last instant or often never revealed. From Police reports I have seen, when the knife is shown to the victim it is often as a threatening measure to gain some sort of psychological/physical leverage, but most times the person who shows the knife is unwilling to actually use it, else he would have done so already. Knife fighters ambush people as someone else said here. The 2 knife fighters squaring off, blades bared is not common in most places on this side of the world from my experience, hence one needs to address this if training for this sort of reality.

So regarding the drills by Chris and Michael I think they serve a great purpose in learning weapon retention if you are a knife user, especially if using the knife coming from an Aikido or tantojutsu type paradigm. In this case, there is a good possibility that if one draws a blade the arm can be grabbed (like I said oftentimes not by the person you are focussing on). If one is not prepared to deal with the grab or other attacks designed to negate/bypass the weapon there is a good chance that the weapon will be relinquished and one will be killed with one's own knife. It is the same reason that LEO and others practice handgun retention techniques and drills today because people sometimes do weird things, like try to take away one's gun at close range. The same goes for a blade or any other weapon. Getting to the point on dedicated attacks in Aikido, the average person who is trying to stop your knife from cutting them or trying to get it away tends to have quite a strong death grip on, precisely what Aikido waza likes best.